Yahoo to buy Tumblr for $1.1B

Published on May 20, 2013.

Sunnyvale, Calif.—Yahoo Inc. announced it will acquire microblogging service Tumblr for approximately $1.1 billion in cash. Tumblr will operate as a separate business with its current leadership, including CEO David Karp, intact, the companies said in a statement.
Yahoo said Tumblr will be able to deploy Yahoo's personalization technology and search infrastructure to help its users discover bloggers and content. In return, Tumblr's 50 billion blog posts will be added to Yahoo's media network. The two companies will also work together to create advertising opportunities, the statement said.
The combination of Yahoo and Tumblr is expected to grow Yahoo's audience by 50% to more than 1 billion monthly visitors and to increase traffic by about 20%, the companies said.
The acquisition is the seventh, and the largest, by Yahoo since Marissa Mayer joined the company as CEO in July. Other recent Yahoo acquisitions include social recommendation engine Jybe Inc. in March; information and image sharing company Snip.it in January; and video chat broadcasting app OnTheAir in December.